From Global to Local: Investigation of Necessary Engineering Skills for KBE Transformation in Qatar in the Context of Global Engineering Attributes Reem Khair, Mahmoud Abdulwahed*, Abdelmagid Hamouda, Mazen O. Hasna College of Engineering, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar * Corresponding Author:
[email protected]
Abstract— this paper provides the findings of a study on investigating the required contextual engineering skills in Qatar in light of the global engineering skills. A set of 20 attributes were identified in the literature, and surveys were implemented to measure the importance of these skills in Qatar. The targeted groups spanned from students, practicing engineers, senior industrial engineers, and academicians. The basic logic behind surveying various engineering groups was mainly to evaluate the capabilities of the current engineering labor force as well as evaluating the potential of the future engineering supply (current students). The main findings indicated the consensus of participating groups on the importance of enhancing communication skills. High perceptual gaps were identified in communication skills, business and entrepreneurship and practical skills. Remedy actions that were proposed so that the future supply of engineers is featured by required and desired level of selected skills. Keywords— Global Engineering Skills; Engineering Education; Transformation; Knowledge -based Economy (KBE); and Statistical Analysis.
I.
INTRODUCTION
Engineering in particular and other relevant STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) fields in general are the most critical areas for a nation to focus on while seeking for- or maintaining a knowledge based economy status [1] [2] [3], [4], [5], “unpublished”[6]. For that reason, Engineering and Technology are at the core of realizing the Qatari government strategic vision that aims to transform its economy from being hydrocarbon based into a knowledge based one by 2030. To respond to the requirements of the KBE age, a clear necessity in producing and managing the right engineering technical and non-technical skills is recognized. Given the increasing complexity and interdisciplinary nature of the engineering profession, equipping engineering graduates with a set of non-technical skills such as communication, decision making, management, leadership, emotional intelligence, cultural awareness, and social ethics is required. A global literature review on skills outcomes of engineering degrees in the US, Europe, and Asia Pacific showed that students lack enough competencies in these soft skills [7]. Similarly, certain core engineering competencies such as problem solving, design, and analytical thinking became essential in the 21st century work force even for those who would study and work in non-engineering disciplines [8].
978-1-4673-5261-1/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE
A number of key thematic areas for an engineering education that is fitting with a KBE requirements are identified: 1- Engineering Entrepreneurship, 2- Engineering Leadership (technical and societal), 3- Engineering Design, 4- Engineering Creativity and Innovation. Focusing specifically on futuristic characteristics of next generation of engineering graduates, a list of 20 attributes of future engineers has been identified in the literature in support of the four engineering KBE themes identified earlier; where ten attributes belong to the technical aspects, and the other ten belong to the non-technical aspects. These skills are communication skills [9][10][11][12], teamwork [10] [13] [14], leadership [1][2] [9] [13], business and entrepreneurship [1][2] [15], “unpublished” [16], creativity and innovation [12] [13] [14], adaptability [1][2][17], strategic thinking [1][2][17], lifelong learning [1][2] [17], cultural and diversity [1][2] [18], ethical awareness [1][2], “unpublished” [19][20], practical skills [1][2][10], technical breadth [21][22], theoretical understanding [1][2], science principles’ knowledge [1][2], critical thinking [1][2][23][12] [17], problem solving [2][3] [12], analytical thinking [9][10] [17], engineering design skills [24][25], wide variety of IT skills [22][26] and research skills. Generally, these attributes were derived from global studies on future engineers in USA, UK, Europe, and Australia, such as the UK study: "Educating Engineers for the 21st Century: The Industry View" and the US study: "The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century". Yet, no similar efforts were done in the Middle East. For assessing the current status of Qatari engineering graduates attributes, an instrument in a form of Questionnaire has been implemented. The core part of the instrument was utilized to collect data from four different samples: 1- Senior engineers in the local industry, 2Engineering academics from Qatar, 3- Undergraduate engineering students in Qatar, and 4- Postgraduate engineering students in Qatar (mainly professional working engineers). The following section provides further details on the conceptual framework of the study, the methodology, data analysis, and main findings of the investigation. II. CONCEPTUAL FRAMWORK OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION FOR A KNOWLEDGE BASED ECONOMY (KBE) To have a productive engineering education system in place, the efficiency of inputs should be developed and controlled in such a way that leads to the effectiveness of outputs. This will be only possible if it is supported by the use
of innovative, quality and value added processes. Fig. 1 below illustrates the proposed conceptual framework of engineering education and its role in supporting and building up a KBE as discussed in what follows.
Fig. 1. Illustration of a closed loop of engineering education and its role in supporting building up KBE.
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a science system can support KBE development by contributing to three key functions which are knowledge production, knowledge transmission, and knowledge transfer [27]. Knowledge production means developing and creating new knowledge mostly in a form of research. Knowledge transmission means educating, developing and upgrading human capital. This is a key enabler in raising the awareness of today’s students while building in the desired capabilities of tomorrow’s engineers. Furthermore, knowledge transfer means publicizing knowledge and providing solutions to real life problem. This element addresses the practical implication of engineering in all real life aspects. To reflect a comprehensive role of education system in KBE, another key function is added which is the knowledge acquisition. To have an innovative and effective processes, education system should reflect the two way communication between academicians and other key entities in the system such as students. To complement the knowledge transmission function, a well-grounded knowledge acquisition process should be endorsed. In this process, students are the recipients of current available technical, social, environmental, economic and technological information while academicians are the providers. In parallel to these functions that are based on knowledge, a focus should be given to developing and enhancing certain set
of soft and core engineering skills. A literature review on required modern and future engineering skills was done indicating that engineers need to be equipped with both soft and core skills “unpublished” [28]. These skills are very important as they eventually capitalize the produced engineering workforce who directly supports the KBE development. In this aspect, academicians and elite students are considered to play a vital role. To support the main objective of this paper, research efforts can be steered further towards modernizing engineering education, revising and restructuring engineering curricula in such a way that support the development of these skills. Such modernization may include shifting from classical teaching towards more constructivist learning approaches, such as technology enabled learning [29][30][31][32], research based learning [33], meaningful mathematics [34], experiential and project based learning approaches [35], continuous assessment and effective feedback provision [36]; “unpublished” [37], etc. These modern teaching and learning approaches may equip students with better skills than traditional approaches. Before shifting into curricular and pedagogical major changes, an assessment of the current inventory of these skills would be recommended. Initial assessment is provided in this paper. Finally, all inventories of knowledge and skills formed through these processes are acquired and employed in engineering workforces, who are eventually utilized to serve in building up systems, products, Research and Development (R&D) activities, patents and services. These outputs are required to back the development of all KBE pillars. These pillars are defined by the World Bank as Economic Incentive and Institutional Regime (EIR), innovation and technological adoption, education and training, and Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) infrastructure [38]. All these pillars if enabled, support a smooth transition to knowledge based economy and society driven by innovation and knowledge. It is worth noting that defined framework is a closed loop system. It means that continuous feedback from all downstream are fed again as inputs to the system so that all processes are adjusted to cope with the new requirements. III.
METHODOLGY
This section looks at the framework and methodologies used in this study. Mainly, surveys and pilot interviews are the two techniques aimed to collect the relevant data. Data which are needed to identify needed skills were collected through four different surveys. It may seem reasonable that these surveys were designed to target different engineering groups, classified as engineering practitioners; engineering academics; undergraduate engineering students; and postgraduate engineering students (mainly professional working engineers pursuing their graduate degrees). As the general objective is to identify the level of awareness and satisfaction in regards to major attributes needed to support Qatar vision 2030, all surveys were administrated locally in Qatar. Basic content analysis was utilized to analyze the pilot interviews, and different statistical techniques (descriptive statistics, hypothesis tests and inferential statistics, etc.) were utilized for analyzing the surveys. Having the surveys anonymously administrated, a total of 190 valid responses were
received by which 121 were submitted electronically and the remaining 69 were paper based. Following this, data were organized in one database and then, statistically analyzed using SPSS. Rating of skills was based on a likert scale from 1 to 5, where “1 = Strongly Disagree”, and “ 5= Strongly Agree”. TABLE I. MEAN VALUES OF GROUPS’ PERCEPTION IN EACH OF THE ENGINEERING SKILLS. “I” REFERS TO “IMPORTANCE”, AND “S” REFERS TO “SATISFACTION”
Attributes
Bachelor Student
Groups Professio nal Engineer Junior
Master Student
Academic Engineering Staff
I 7 7 6
S 3 6 5
Engineer I S 6 5 6 6 6 5
I 4 6 6
S 3 5 4
I 6 5 5
S 5 5 5
6
4
5
4
6
4
5
4
6
5
6
5
6
4
6
4
6
5
5
5
6
4
5
4
Strategic Thinking Lifelong Learning
6 6
5 5
6 6
5 5
6 6
4 4
5 5
4 4
Cultural&Diversity Ethical Awareness Practical Skills Technical Breadth Theoretical Understanding Science Principles’ Knowledge Critical Thinking Problem Solving Analytical Thinking Engineering Design Skills Wide Variety of IT Skills Research Skills
6 6 4 6
5 5 3 5
6 6 6 5
5 5 5 5
6 6 4 6
5 5 3 4
5 6 6 5
5 5 5 5
6
6
6
5
6
5
5
5
6
6
6
5
6
5
5
5
6 6 7
5 5 6
6 6 6
5 5 5
6 6 6
5 4 5
5 6 6
4 4 4
7
5
6
5
6
5
5
5
Communication Teamwork Leadership Business and Entrepreneurship Creativity and Innovation Adaptability
addressing few of them. Major irregularities are highlighted below. Unlike the strongly agreement in view of Bachelor Engineering Students on the importance of Communication Skills, Expert Engineers expressed a neutral perception in this regards. Irrespective to this inconsistent view, both groups believe that they were not equipped enough with this type of Skills. Additionally, a noticeable difference was observed with regards to Practical skills. While both Junior Engineers and Academician agreed that these skills are very important to be presented in the future engineering supply, both Bachelor level Students and Expert Engineers disagreed with this. Alongside with this differed perception, both latter groups expressed that they are not satisfied with the students/engineers’ capabilities in these skills while former groups are somehow satisfied. Moreover, the shared view on Cultural Diversity Awareness was not totally alike. Even though all groups agreed that they are skilled and equipped with this attribute, Academic Engineering Staff did not view it as an important skill as the other groups did. The targeted groups were also asked to rank the most important six engineering skills according to their own perception. As these data are classified to nominal and nonparametric, Mode Analysis would be the suitable measure to reflect the overall conclusion of this question. Table II summarizes the main findings from Mode Analysis. It can be noticed that a mutual agreement was given to communication skills being the most important skill for engineers of 2030. Only 50% of the identified engineering skills appeared in the top 6 ranking given by all engineering group. Commonly, communication, teamwork and problem solving appeared in the ranking of all groups. TABLE II. SKILLS RANKING GIVEN BY EACH ENGINEERING GROUP PRESENTED BY THE MODE Group
6
5
6
5
6
5
6
5
6
5
6
6
5
4
5
4
IV.
DATA ANALYSIS
Surveys were designed to: 1- identify the level of awareness of various engineering population with regards to skills needed for transforming Qatar’s economy to a KBE; and 2- help in measuring the degree of difference between their perception of how much these skills are important and to what extent they think they are equipped with. The following subsections provide further details on the data analysis. A. Descriptive Statistical Analysis Three descriptive measures were used to support the analysis of obtained data related to engineering skills; namely, the mean, the mode and the Pearson Correlation. Firstly, the average perception of each attribute was computed for every respondent group (for both level of importance and satisfaction). Results obtained are presented in table I below. It was noticed that there was a common perception between all groups in viewing majority of the attributes. Yet, to some extent this entire commonality was slightly disturbed when
Ranks Rank 1
Rank 2
Rank 3
Rank 4
Rank 5
Rank 6
Bachelor Students
Communication
Teamwork
Creativity and Innovation
Problem Solving
Engineering Design Skills
Lifelong Learning
Junior Engineer
Communication
Leadership
Teamwork
Problem Solving
Teamwork
Problem Solving
Expert Engineer
Communication
Teamwork
Teamwork
Problem Solving
Problem Solving
Wide Variety of IT Skills
Academic ian
Communication
Critical Thinking
Teamwork
Critical Thinking
Technical Breadth
Problem Solving
B. Inferntial Statistical Analysis The second part of the analysis aims to identify if there is a statistically significant difference between the ranking of all groups with regards to awareness and satisfaction levels. Mann-Whitney U test was used and repeated six times as it is designed to test only two independent samples (all possible combinations of two groups chosen from the set of 4 groups is 4!/(2!(4-2)!) = 6 combinations). TABLE III. STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE DIFFERENCE IN SKILLS IMPORTANCE BETWEEN EVERY TWO GROUPS Attributes
Combination of every 2 groups (a) 1&2
1&3
1&4
2&3
2&4
3&4
Communication Teamwork Leadership Business and Entrepreneuship Creativity and Innovation Adaptability Strategic Thinking Lifelong Learning Cultural and Diversity Ethical Awarenss Practical Skills Technical Breadth Theoritical Understanding Science Prociple Knowledge Crtitical Thinking Problem Solving Analytical Thinking Engineering Design Skills Wide Variety of IT Skills Research Skills a.
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Problem Solving Analytical Thinking Engineering Design Skills Wide Variety of IT Skills Research Skills b.
1&3
1&4
2&3
2&4
3&4
√ × ×
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×
•
A statistically significant difference was found between Bachelor level Students and Academicians in regards to all soft skills. It was found that Bachelor level Students felt more strongly than Academician that all soft skills are important to be in Qatari Engineers in light of Qatar 2030 vision. At the same time, a statistically significant difference was found with regards to their level of satisfaction over few of these soft skills. It was noticed that Bachelor Students were more satisfied with the level of capabilities in communication, teamwork, and creativity and innovation.
•
Similarly, a statistically significant difference was found between both groups in regards to 50% of core engineering skills which were: technical breadth, theoretical understanding, analytical thinking, engineering design skills and research skills. For research skills, both Bachelor level Students and Master Students perceived it with more importance when comparing it with the perception of Expert Engineers and Academicians. Moreover, a statistically significance difference was found between both groups when ranking the level of satisfaction of their capabilities in 80% of core skills. Noticeably, Bachelor Students were more satisfied when it comes to their capabilities in theoretical understanding, science principle knowledge, critical thinking, problem solving, analytical thinking, engineering design skills and research skills. On the contrary, Academician felt more strongly than Bachelor level Students that the students/engineers’ are equipped enough with practical skills.
•
With reference to communication skills, a statistically significant difference was found between Expert Engineers and both Bachelor Students and Master Students. More precisely, it was noticed that both groups felt more strongly than Expert Engineers that this attribute is of importance for future engineers.
•
Moreover, there was a statistically significant difference between Bachelor Students and Master Students when viewing practical skills, adaptability, critical thinking and analytical thinking. It was shown that Bachelor level Students have a stronger appreciation that adaptability, critical thinking and
Combination of every 2 groups (a) 1&2
√
Using SPSS, the Mann-Whitney statistics was computed for every combination of groups. Summary of results is summarized in table III and table IV. The main findings of Mann-Whitney hypothesis test are detailed below:
TABLE IV. STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE DIFFERENCE IN SATISFACTION LEVEL OF SKILLS EQUIPMENT BETWEEN EVERY TWO GROUPS
Communication Teamwork Leadership Business and Entrepreneuship Creativity and Innovation Adaptability Strategic Thinking Lifelong Learning Cultural and Diversity Ethical Awarenss Practical Skills Technical Breadth Theoritical Understanding Science Prociple Knowledge Crtitical Thinking
√
Group 1 indicates Bachelor Students, Group 2 indicates Master Students, Group 3 indicates expert engineers and group 4 indicates academicians
Group 1 indicates Bachelor Students, Group 2 indicates Master Students, Group 3 indicates expert engineers and group 4 indicates academicians
Attributes
×
analytical thinking skills are important for engineers of 2030. On the contrary, Master Students felt more strongly than Bachelor Students that practical skills are important. At the same time, Master Students were more satisfied with both communication and practical skills they have when comparing it to the average level of Bachelor Students satisfaction. •
There was a statistically significant difference when viewing both leadership and cultural diversity awareness attributes by Master Students and Academicians. Noticeably, Academicians viewed these skills with less appreciation when compared with Master Students view.
•
There was no statistically significant difference between Expert Engineers and Academicians in terms of soft skills. However, a statistically significant difference was found when viewing the practical skills (one of engineering core skills). It is worth mentioning that academician felt more strongly than expert engineers that they are equipped with practical skills.
•
There was a statistically significant difference between Bachelor Students and Expert Engineers in viewing 40% of soft skills; namely in communication, team work, lifelong learning and ethical awareness. In all mentioned skills, Bachelor Students had stronger belief that these skills were important for engineers of 2030. At the same time, for 80% of core engineering skills, a statistical significant difference was observed between both groups when it came to their level of satisfaction. It was noticed that Bachelor level Students felt more strongly than the expert engineers that they were equipped with these skills (theoretical understanding, science principle knowledge, critical thinking, problem solving, analytical thinking, engineering design skills, and research skills). V.
MAIN FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
In this section, the main findings are highlighted where two main aspects will be of focus. Firstly, major inconsistencies when perceiving both importance level and satisfaction in competency level between groups are highlighted. Secondly, attributes that were perceived with low confidence in competency are identified and methods for bridging these gaps are proposed. This will then be used to adjust the engineering curricula so that the workforce is prepared to support KBE activities as described in Section II. A. Attributes perceived by groups with unequal level of importance/satisfaction Two main attributes exhibited some sort of irregularities in regards to groups’ perception; namely, communication and practical skills. For communication skills, a mutual understanding on the importance of these skills was demonstrated by all groups. It is worth noting that bachelor students were the group who strongly agreed that communication skills are very important for the future supplies of engineers. Additionally, the same group believed along with
expert engineers that they are not equipped enough with these skills. One major note arises here; engineers-in-process who are the potential future engineers are aware that communication skills are necessary to confront professional, technological, social and economic future challenges. Second attribute that was perceived differently by groups was the practical skills. It was observed that, bachelor students and expert engineers believed that practical skills are not important to be in future engineering supply while junior engineers and academician felt the opposite. Following the same trend, both former groups expressed that they are incompetent in the level of practical skills they have. Underestimating the importance of these skills is an issue of concern and needs to be investigated clearly. Being practitioner in engineering and believing that practical skills are not important may be explained by the fact that the current expert engineers are equipped enough with such skills such that they did not recognize its importance as they do not lack it anymore . Not recognizing the importance of these skills by Bachelor Students may be due to their view of practical skills as purely working experience and that it can only be achieved after graduation and once leaving the education system. However, practical skills cover the ability to use wide range of tools and techniques, as well as laboratory and workshop equipment (including both hardware and software related to their specific disciplines). At this end, both raising the awareness of practical skills’ importance and filling in its competency gap are important. Not only statistical results revealed the existence of this gap, but also, evidence from engineering employers had shown that employers struggle while filling vacancies due to the shortage of fresh engineering work force with relevant skills and practical experience. Specifically, Engineering employers find it more difficult to recruit people with technical and practical skills than other skills. To this extent, it remains the educational institutions responsibility to raise the awareness of industries in investing intensively in graduates during their transition phase (from acquiring knowledge to applying it) while working on enhancing students capabilities in engineering practical elements. B. Attributes perceived by students with low confidence in competency level The basic logic behind surveying various engineering groups is mainly evaluating the capabilities of the current engineering labor force as well as evaluating the potential of the future engineering supply (current students). For that reason, those skills which were perceived with low or neutral agreement by fresh and in-process engineers are found to be a valuable input for the conducted research. The three highest perceptual gaps between importance and satisfaction were detected in the following skills: “Communication”, “Business and Entrepreneurship”, and “Practical Skills”. Table V summarizes possible reasons behind the perceived gap in competence and provide some possible enhancement solutions that can fit in the framework proposed in Section II. These remedy actions can be used to adjust the existing engineering curricula or by or by introducing extra-curricular activities. Eventually, what is of our interest is to equip the new engineering workforce in such a
way that supports the in development of innovation and knowledge driven economy. TABLE V. INVESTIGATION ON ENGINEERING ATTRIBUTES WHICH WERE PERCEIVED WITH NEUTRAL OR LOW SATISFACTION LEVEL IN COMPETENCE Possible Sources of weakness
Communication skills
• Students’ low confidence towards communication in foreign languages; • Deficient teaching methods; • Lack of opportunity for engineering students to practice communication skills; • Absence of advanced communication specialized courses in engineering curricula.
Business & Entrepreneurship
• Traditional engineering curricula tend to be focused on how-to-do-it (technical knowledge and skills), with little or no emphasis on entrepreneurship; • Limited view of engineer prevailing career path which is rather oriented towards technical, academic or managerial functions within large companies; • Lack of enterprising spirit among new engineers due to unrealized importance.
Practical Skills
• Unappreciated view of courses that contain practical elements due to low or absence of assigned credit hours; that is, it is not attached significantly to grades causing careless attitudes towards its importance and results in ineffective utilization of its benefits; • Lack of activities which contain direct engagement with local/international industries.
Possible enhancement solutions • Involve active learning as part of engineering courses • Encouraging student exchanges with countries abroad • Encourage extra-curricular activities (such as seminars, presentations, contribution in newsletters with academic articles) by attributing part of the overall grades towards it • Organize specialized seminars, workshops, and tutorial sessions on both basic and advanced communication skills. • Encourage active participation by students in actual communication situations; • Provide awareness and educational seminars on entrepreneurial attitudes not only to transfer knowledge, but also to develop the building-up of skills and attitudes in favor of entrepreneurship; • Raise the enterprising spirit in engineers from their freshmen year by facilitating the exposure towards successful entrepreneur stories; • Introduce entrepreneurship courses customized to engineering students and integrate it as part of the general engineering core requirement; • Allow engineering students to take relevant courses from school of business as electives. • Increase weight of credit hours assigned to courses that address practical skills elements; • Facilitate more opportunities to students for industry exposure outside the study time (during semester breaks); • Integrate experimental sessions that involve use of software and hardware related to specific discipline in theory classes.
C. Issues of concern Surprisingly, when viewing results of analysis and especially when looking at means related to the level of awareness among defined groups, it was observed that the lowest importance rank for around 80% of listed attributes was given by Academic Engineering Staff. This group had the least awareness level with a mean of means equals to approximately 5, which reflects a little agreement on the importance of all the attributes. Being the influential guiders, and facilitators of the educational process, this issue mandates a prompt response due to its significant impact on building up the desired future supply of engineers. VI.
CONCLUSION
This paper provided analysis and investigation of needed skills in engineering workforce in Qatar in light of the country’s vision of transformation into a KBE by 2030. Literature was reviewed to identify the futuristic engineering skills that support the KBE development. Then, a framework that illustrated the engineering education and its role in supporting building up KBE was proposed. Both the importance of engineering knowledge and skills were acknowledged in the proposed framework. This study was based on surveying various engineering groups. The main logic behind this was mainly to evaluate the capabilities of the current engineering labor force as well as evaluating the potential of the future engineering supply (current students) with regards to the identified skills. Among these 20 skills, communication skills, teamwork, and problem solving were most frequently ranked important between the main groups of surveyed stakeholders; Communication skills were ranked highest consistently by all groups. This guided us to the conclusion that these skills are of high priority to be promptly included in the engineering curricula when compared to the other skills. Additionally, the highest perceptual gap of importance versus satisfaction was identified in “Communications skills”, “Business and Entrepreneurship”, and “Practical Skills”. The paper provided a set of potential reasons behind these findings as well as a number of recommendations for implementation in the curriculum. As a sum up, the current engineering education system should be adjusted to incorporate the prioritized skills (skills that are commonly ranked as very important). It should also allow the inclusion of proposed remedy actions to overcome identified irregularities. This can be done by either changing the current engineering curricula to address these gaps or by introducing extra-curricular activities. ACKNOWLEDGMENT Data analyzed in this paper were collected through a senior project by Amal Al-Enazi, Bayan Al-Amoudi, Fatima AlEmadi, Reham Abdullhadi, and Sara Adel Al-Khawaja; their effort is greatly acknowledged. This work is conducted under a research project investigating the attributes of future engineers in Qatar. Funding of this project is provided by Dolphin Energy, and is greatly acknowledged. REFERENCES
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